9
!
hostile sense.
Mr. Hennessy observes that they differ little from those earlier ( submitted to Sir Arthur Kennedy by Sir Brooke Robertson. There is, to my mind, one very significant differeuce, namely, in suppression of the original proposition to establish a branch of the Foreign Customs Inspectorate on the mainland opposite Hong Kong. I attached much importance to this proposition, because I believed that the point once carried, we should get rid altogether of the three Customs stations which enforce what is stigmatised as the blockade. These three stations the Chinese Government has, of course, a perfect right to maintain on the three points of Chinese territory on which they have been maintained, but it is to me certain that so long as they exist under exclusively native superintendance, so long will the junk trade be taxed in excess of the tariffs posted at these stations. The staff at such stations will always be of a low order; underpaid, if paid at all; beholden almost certainly to irregular fees for its subsistence, while there is the greatest difficulty in bringing home to it judicially the proof of such irregularity, the witness against it being the Chinese trader, who has to complain in effect of his own Government through a foreign authority. In the interest of the junk trade I should have been glad to insure the disappearance of these stations, for which there could have been no longer any necessity, once a branch of the Foreign Customs had been invested with the surveillance of the trade.
I have no doubt that Sir Brooke Robertson has good reasons to give for the abandonment of this part of the original scheme. He has had very possibly as great difficulty on the part of the colony, as on the part of the Chinese. Our community is jealous of what it understands to be the freedom of the colonial port; and the Superintendent of Customs at Canton is as little likely as any of his brethren to desire expansion of the Foreign Customs Inspectorate, where its branch establish- ment must supersede the native branch offices officered by his own hangers on.
The new rules at the same time do promise a check on the abuse of their authority by the three stations as regards in particular the invasion of the waters of the colony by Chinese cruisers when pursuing junks; the infraction of law of which the colony has undoubted right to complain. Taken as a whole the new rules deprive these cruisers of their plea for irregular action of the kind; for they fully recognise the right of the Chinese Government to overhaul all Chinese vessels on their way into Hong Kong; and the obligation of the colony to refuse trading facilities to vessels that cannot, when they enter the port, produce proof that they have been so overhauled, and to certificate such vessels leaving the port, in such wise as to protect the Chinese Revenue against irregularity. Lastly, the appeal to Canton provided for in Rule 4, will, to a certain extent, and for a time, at all events, restrain the exactions of the three stations. I trust that Sir Brooke Robertson's new Rules may be allowed a trial.
I have implied above that I have no faith in the adherence of the stations to a tariff. It is none the less desirable that a tariff should be published, and hung up at the station Custom-houses. The Commission, I presume, will look to it that its import rates do not exceed the rates at which British imports are admitted into Macao.
As to Chinese produce brought in junks to Hong Kong, I confess that I do not see my way to any arrangement that will secure it against the lovy of dues, which, according to our ideas and practice, must be esteemed arbitrary exactions. A quota of these more than probably passes into the private purse of the Canton Superinten. tent, himself always a member of the Imperial household, and not lightly taxed in the provision of jewels or other requirements of the "Court as distinct from the State. Where produce comes from the coast of Kuang Tung, if, thanks to our intervention, dues cannot be charged at these three stations, they will not improbably be levied at those points of the coast, not open to foreign trade, from which the junks clear out; or the junks may be subjected to mart dues, or some other form of dues, by which our object in a Tariff may be equally defeated. I should recommend great liberality in the matter of Chinese produce to the framers of the Tariff. This may encourage the Superintendent at Canton (the Hoppo) to enjoin moderation upon his subordinates. A farther check upon their exactions might be provided by the transmission to him periodically, through the Consul, of a return of the Chinese junks that had entered the harbours of Hong Kong or cleared thence. The Colony has now a system of registra- tion that would facilitate the preparation of such a return.
Lord Carnarvon desires to be informed whether, assuming the war-tax spoken of by Sir Brooke Robertson to be li-kin, it would not be desirable to avoid the use of language that might appear to sanction the addition of li-kin to the duties upon British goods leviable under the Treaty of Tientsin.
J
In a Memorandum laid before Lord Derby on the 28th February, copy of which was forwarded to Lord Carnarvon, with a request that his Lordship would peruse that part of a long Memorandum of mine, appended to the Blue Book, on the Revision of the Treaty of Tientsin (1869). I endeavoured to show that the trade in British imports between Hong Kong-I might have said between any other foreign port-and points on the Chinese coast not open to foreign shipping, cannot claim to be carried on under the same conditions as at those points to which the Treaty of Tientsin alone gives access. As regards li-kin, it is undoubtedly what Sir B. Robertson refers to as war-tax. But although the existence of li-kin first became known to us when the Tại Ping Rebellion broke out, and although a large portion of the li-kin now levied is absorbed by the war expenditure on the north-western frontier of China, it is somewhat misleading to translate hi-kin as war-tax. It is really a tax upon trade, which, if its denomination be as modern as we are in the habit of asserting, is otherwise no novelty. It is a "benevolence" or forced contribution, exacted from the native trader on everything in which he trades; exacted after Chinese fashion, arbitrarily and irregularly, and shamefully misapplied. Until the Chinese Exchequer has recovered the disorder which commenced in 1852, if not before, the Government will be unable to dispense with it. Not half the revenue in normal times, derivable from land, grain, salt, and other sources, is at present collected, and for its expenses, ordinary or extra- ordinary, the Government has to look for the rest from the foreign Customs and the li-kin. The former is assured it by its foreign Inspectorate. Of the total of the latter it is by no means assured. The State Papers, appended to my Report of the 24th July, will show in what darkness the Central Government is left by the provinces as to the amounts of li-kin collected. After struggling against it for years, I must express my conviction that we waste our strength in the attempt to protect our trade against it. It is for this reason that I consented to propose to Her Majesty's Government the exchange provided for in the Chefoo Agreement. I would suggest that the third section of my Agreement, that explaining the trade section of my Agreement, should be communicated to the Colonial Office. An even fuller explanation of the nature of li-kin, and of our rights in connection with it, will be found in my Memorandum of 1869. Upwards of twenty pages of it are devoted to the question of abnormal
THOMAS FRANCIS WADE.
taxation.
November 30, 1877.
(Signed)
No. 5.
Memorandum by Sir J. Pauncefote.
IT would be very satisfactory if this question could be settled without the appointment of the Commission agreed to in the Chefoo Convention. Governor Hennessy reported in his despatches of the 3rd* and 30th August last that "all His complaints about the so-called blockade of Hong Kong appear to have ceased.” Excellency would seem to attribute this result to a more vigilant enforcement of the Hong Kong Ordinance No. 6 of 1866. This Ordinance, however, was not passed for the prevention of smuggling. It was introduced by Governor Sir Richard Macdonnell as a measure of Police and Public Safety, the harbour and town being at that time infested with pirates and thieves. It provides that all junks on arrival shall obtain an anchorage permit, and a declaration must previously be made by the master of the name and capacity of the junk, the nature of her cargo, the port of clearance for Hong Kong, and the names of the consignees in the Colony. No junks are permitted to leave without a clearance, and other provisions are contained in the Ordinance for the sole purpose of ascertaining the character of the junk and exercising a police surveillance on those which might be suspected of piratical designs, but this law gives no powers whatever for the repression of smuggling.
I consider, therefore, that the cessation of the complaints in question is not due to this Ordinance, but to the incessant and well-founded remonstrances from the Colony which have at last compelled the Chinese authorities to restrain the lawless acts of the miscellaneous craft of revenue boats of all descriptions which harassed the Hong Kong shipping.
It appears to me that if the British and Chinese Governments can agree in
* See Inclosure in Colonial Office, November 27, 1877. [92]
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